


Seafood for Thought

by russiazilla



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russiazilla/pseuds/russiazilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tetora's working in a restaurant and unfortunately has a small food-burning streak going on. Souma seems to think that maybe a meeting with the mysterious fish man might be able to help Tetora out of his slump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seafood for Thought

**Author's Note:**

> this came out of me and a friend dicking around trying to come up with aus for almost every pairing, and I actually wrote this for a creative writing class (I submitted it for a grade lmao), so it's not super shippy but the tetokan is there? probably? anyway hope yall enjoy
> 
> ALSO I was recently informed that seafood apparently doesnt include actual fish?? like wtf its SEA FOOD

Tetora holds his breath as he carefully flips the fish in the pan, and promptly lets out a frustrated groan upon seeing the blackened underside of the fillet. He’s burned the food again, for the third time that day. Not only that, but the restaurant is busy at this hour, and there is only a limited number of hands in the kitchen. He flips the fillet back over, glancing around to see if any of his coworkers – or worse yet, his supervisor – saw the burnt side. Maybe he can stick another fillet on the pan without anyone noticing.

No such luck. A hand descends on his shoulder.

“Tetora!” a voice chastises. “I saw that. You burned the fish again, didn’t you?”

“No,” Tetora protests, but a single fork stuck under the fillet reveals its ugly truth.

Souma sighs and takes the pan off of the heat. “Tetora, I know you like to cook, and I know you want to cook, but we can’t have this kind of waste. This is, what, your fourth time today?”

“Third,” Tetora interjects sullenly.

“Okay, third,” Souma repeats, readjusting his apron and tying up his long hair. “That’s still no good. For the rest of today, I want you to do prep. I’ll take over your station. If there’s leftover at the end of the day, you’re free to stay late and I’ll show you how to fry things properly.”

Tetora doesn’t argue. He heads over to the kitchen island, where his coworker Anzu is chopping onions. She makes some space for him, sweeping up her onion pieces with the knife.

“At least you didn’t start a fire this time,” Anzu laughs. Her eyes are red and teary but her smile is wide. “Did you have the heat on too high again?”

“Don’t remind me about that,” Tetora says. He checks the order and grabs a few vegetables accordingly, and begins slicing them up with a vengeance. He grits his teeth; prep work was always so boring! He’d much rather be working with the fire, and stir-fry _is_ his specialty, but things just aren’t happening the way he wants them to at the stove. It took Tetora half a year to move up from being a dishwasher, and now it seems as though he’s going to be stuck at the next stage up.

Anzu drops a few more potatoes in Tetora’s space. “Come on, don’t dwell on it. Prep work is important too!”

 

At the end of the day, there is, predictably, barely anything left over. It’s a Saturday, the busiest night of the week. The kitchen closes an hour earlier than the rest of the restaurant, and everyone is exhausted by the time they clock out. Tetora, too, is feeling the familiar fatigue from standing and rushing about for hours, and as much as he’s interested in what the sous chef has to show him, he also wants nothing more than to get home and collapse into bed.

“Good work, everyone,” Souma says as the kitchen staff files out. “Tetora, stay for a minute.”

Tetora makes a noise of affirmation from the affectionately dubbed Break Chair in the corner of the kitchen, and thinks about how much he wants to change out of his sweaty undershirt.

“It’s a little late,” Souma starts, after the last employee leaves. “and there’s not much left over, so I can’t really show you anything today.”

“Okay,” Tetora says. Figures. Souma probably just wants to get home too. “What should I be working on tomorrow?”

“Actually, I’d appreciate if you could come early tomorrow to get the seafood delivery. Normally I’d do it, but…” Souma fidgets with his hair. “Well? You just have to come at nine. The delivery man will help you.”

“Okay,” Tetora says again. Nine isn’t that early. The restaurant opens at noon on Sundays, and he normally would show up for work at eleven. Two extra hours is nothing. It’s not like he has any other plans, since those are hard to make when he works all seven days of the week. 

“You can get back in the line, too – of course, providing you don’t burn anything. Otherwise, back to prep you go.” Souma slides a key across the table to Tetora. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, and thanks.”

 

On Sunday, Tetora cuts short his morning TV time and heads over to the restaurant a little before nine. He’s opened the restaurant before, but it’s still strange being the only person in the place, especially three hours before actual opening. Not knowing what else to do, he sits at the front podium to wait.

The phone rings at 9 AM sharp. Tetora is startled by the sound and instinctively reaches for the cell in his pocket before realizing it is the restaurant’s landline. He picks up.

“I’m here,” the caller says in a sing-song voice before Tetora can even say hello. “Please open the back door.”

“Just a minute,” Tetora says before hanging up. He makes his way over to the back door and opens it into the alley. There’s a man standing there with phone in one hand and a crate in the other. A large truck emblazoned with a silhouette of a tuna is parked behind him.

“You’re new,” the man says. “I’m Kanata. Do you like fish?”

Tetora is taken aback. Who goes around asking people if they like fish? He chooses to ignore that particular part. “I’m Tetora,” he says, “I’m just taking over for Souma today.”

Kanata smiles and hands Tetora the crate. Tetora looks inside. It’s filled with nets of shrimp. Wordlessly, Tetora goes to put the shrimp away while Kanata unloads more boxes of seafood and ice. It’s not a very sizeable delivery, since fresh fish is delivered every day, so it doesn’t take long for all of the fish to be properly stored in the stockroom’s fridge.

“Do you like fish?” Kanata asks again after they’re done. He’s invited Tetora to sit with him on the stoop of the truck. He has a bag of lemon cookies shaped like fish, and Tetora is a little hungry from moving around.

“I suppose so,” Tetora answers. Despite working in a seafood restaurant, Tetora doesn’t really prefer seafood to any other meat or poultry, and he’s never thought much of it either.

Kanata continues, unprompted. “Fish are very good and important. They play big roles maintaining aquatic ecosystems. They keep the balance in the food chain.” Kanata goes on and on, or at least it feels that way. In actuality, not more than twenty minutes goes by. Kanata stops talking about fish because he has to make some other deliveries, bidding Tetora a “goodbye” and a “see you again” before getting into the truck and driving away.

Souma arrives a few minutes later, like he’d been waiting for a cue. “So what did you think of Kanata?” he asks.

Tetora shakes his head. “I’ve heard more about fish than I ever care to know,” he says. “Is he always like that?”

“I’m afraid so. I could become a marine biologist with the amount I’ve heard about fish. The lemon cookies are really good, though.”

 

Tetora makes it through the day without burning a single thing. In his mind, he repeats the words from Anzu. _Did you have the heat on too high again?_ Maybe that’s his problem. He knows he sometimes turns the heat up a little higher than it should be. Shouldn’t that just mean that whatever he’s cooking cooks faster? And in the restaurant, they certainly need to save on time. Although, he surmises, burning food and having to remake it wouldn’t count as saving time.

As the staff clocks out, Souma once again asks Tetora to get the delivery in the morning.

“What’s going on with you?” Tetora asks. He wonders if this will become a regular thing.

“There’s some stuff going on at home,” Souma says after a slight hesitation, but doesn’t elaborate. There’s no urgency in his voice. “I just can’t show up as early as I have to for now.”

Tetora shrugs. Well, if the boss says so, then that’s the way it’s going to be. He has to be flexible on the job, after all. It’s not a problem. He thinks having the restaurant to himself in the mornings can actually be kind of fun, since though he obviously can’t use real ingredients, he can pretend to cook with showy movements like he’s always wanted to try.

 

Over the next few days, Tetora is sure he’s heard every fact about fish there could ever be to hear, and yet every time he’s surprised by new information. He wonders how Souma put up with the chatty delivery man for however long he’d been receiving the morning delivery. But the lemon cookies really are good, though, so Tetora has a good time.

“When you’re cooking,” Kanata says on Friday, “you have to think about the fish.”

“Think about the fish?” Tetora repeats, cookie halfway to his mouth.

Kanata nods sagely. “Yes. You have to think about the fish, which was taken out of its ecosystem in order to become seafood. You can’t let it waste its sacrifice.”

Tetora laughs a little at that. Sacrifice is kind of a heavy word, isn’t it? But he can tell Kanata is serious by the look on his face. Tetora feels like his whole week has been bizarre, like he’s been thrown out of pace. Here he is, listening to philosophy about fish at 9:30 on Friday morning. Maybe next week he will be writing essays.

“I like fish,” Kanata says. “But I like seafood too. So when I cook, I think about the fish.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tetora says. He thinks he gets it.

 

By the next week, Souma’s home issues have supposedly been resolved, and Tetora stops having to come into work early. He realizes he kind of misses the unsolicited fish facts and the lemon cookies and the sing-song voice that comes with the morning delivery. Talking to Kanata in the morning is nice, since he hasn’t had the time to hang out with old friends lately due to constantly conflicting schedules.

And, when he cooks, Tetora now thinks about the fish. Not so much about sacrifice, no, but at least about the potential for waste if he doesn’t cook properly. Tetora had always been impressed with videos of cooks wielding large pans over open fire, and though he aspired to be able to put on a show with his cooking, he knows that a restaurant kitchen is not the time or place. In a restaurant, it’s not a one-man show, but rather the cooperation of the entire kitchen that enables it to serve good food to the customers.

“We could really have used the help in prep work instead,” Anzu jokes, putting another tally on a board she’d put up labeled _DAYS WITHOUT BURNING ANYTHING_. Tetora had objected to it but Anzu hadn’t been deterred. She smiles fondly at the board. “Looks like there won’t be much point to this anymore.”

“I guess you really do know how to cook,” Souma says, both complimenting Tetora and giving him a light jab. “Why the change of heart?”

Tetora snorts. “It was the lemon cookies,” he says. “Do you mind if I get the delivery tomorrow?”

 

“Ah, it’s you.” Kanata lights up when he sees Tetora at the door. “How are the fish?”

“Just fine,” Tetora says, going along with the conversation even though he isn’t really sure what fish Kanata is talking about here.

Kanata smiles. “Good, good to hear,” he says. They get the delivery stored away with practiced ease, and then sit together as become the custom.

“If you have time,” Tetora says, “after your work or whenever, why don’t you come have a meal here at our place?”

Kanata looks at Tetora with surprise. “You’ll make food for me?”

“Yes, well.” Tetora feels suddenly embarrassed hearing Kanata put the invitation in such a straightforward manner. “It will be all of us, really. If you have time.”

“Okay,” Kanata says, smiling again. “I would be happy to come.”

Then Kanata tells Tetora about deep sea fish that live down where the light doesn’t reach, before heading along on his way.

“You’re in an awfully good mood today,” Anzu comments when she clocks in. “Something happen this morning?”

“Nothing in particular,” Tetora says. He already feels more motivated to do his best in improving his cooking. “Just that a friend might be coming to the restaurant soon.”


End file.
